Stupidity or Genius?

[radferth]

I don't think that will work. Police will ask questions...and what you gonna kill them too?

Nah, plus it is bad publicity for D&D.

"Blackleaf died, and it's all... the DM's fault!"

 

[Iron Sky]

It's a smart response to a stupid situation. The rules should not encourage you to do what you did; however, since they do, your reaction was entirely rational.

Of course, if I were DM, I wouldn't put a 4th-level party up against a vrock to begin with.

This.

I don't know if I could handle playing with a DM like this. Is he pretty new?

I could maybe see using a CR9 monster (assuming by some remote circumastance I was forced to run 3.5) if it was more of a plot scene, with the assumption they won't be fighting it unless they do something really stupid. Example: "There's a fricken' demon destroying that town that there's no way we can kill! How do we deal with it?"

In my last game, the PCs came over a hill to find the enemy human army they were tracking being massacred by a smaller but far superior "monster" army(identity of the monsters withheld for any reading my Story Hour). There was no way they could have taken on the "monster" army; it was there because it was a huge plot twist, not to destroy the party. If they'd charged in, they'd have been in a situation like the vrock fight(though even then I'd probably give them an escape route).

We're seeing this fight in semi-isolation, but it sounds to me like this guy is a "bad DM," to reference another thread. Making players powerless by putting their characters in situations where they are going to die no matter what they do is about as bad as DMing gets (in most systems anyway, if you're playing CoC or Dread it's par for the course).

I'd suggest that next time your character find a better DM.

 

[The_Warlock]

If I were playing the Vrock, I would have (A) picked you up after the fight, to drag back to the Abyss, to be my new "toy," or (B) I would have ignored you in the first place if you were doing a pittance of damage to me, and focused on the other targets, probably even taking an Op-attack from you to move past you on to the more "fun" targets.

...or (C), pick up the now limp adventurer and beat his allies to death with his now dead body...

 

[Keenath]

Punching yourself in the face isn't really "genius" in any case; any reasonable GM should treat "fell unconscious from nonlethal damage" the same as "threw down his weapons and voluntarily surrendered". If you declared getting on the ground with your hands behind your head, or similar, I'd treat it the same way as nonlethal damage, for the most part, and it wouldn't be as silly as socking yourself in the head. (Though I'd probably have done total defense and a five-foot step if it were me...)

Anyway, that aside, the real question is -- do you really think it's a good idea to surrender to a demon? I'd have killed you too. Only it wouldn't be CDG; he'd just step into your space and continue fighting the others while stomping on you with both talon attacks until you died.

That said, this is a really stupid fight to be in; a vock is five levels higher than your party. Of course you got killed. I'm shocked it wasn't a TPK.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

A couple of people have mentioned it was a stupid idea because it was meta-gaming. Even if it was, you could get away with calling a meta-gaming action cheating, cheese, rules raping, etc. But I don’t think it would necessarily be considered stupid.

As for the DMs personal motivation for attacking me. Well, it’s kind of hard to explain.

The guy is a World of Warcraft fanatic and I joke that he always uses aggro rules for his monsters. In the first round of combat, I was the first person to damage the Vrock. I rolled an 8 with my longbow damage, max damage, and did 2 points after the damage reduction.

Even though I had no chance of really hurting him, he came at me. Taking attacks of opportunity and ignoring both the wizard with the fireball and magic missile wands, and the cleric who could cast align weapon so people could hurt him. Simply because I was the first person to do damage, I drew the aggro. I think he even said, “Ow, you do damage, so I’m going to get you”

Another strange battle was the monster that required a fort save when he hit you. I can’t remember what the monster was, or what the save was for. Anyhow, he attacked each of the two party members on it and both made their saves. The creature then broke off, taking attacks of opportunity, to come after me. Since he had attacked the two people on him with no effect, he figured he couldn’t hurt them, and instead went after the guy over there who he hadn’t attacked yet. And as a fighter with Con., I had a better fort save then they did.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

And as for the two guys who got attacked by the Dread Wraith, both level 4.

Its hard to set up the game. Just know that there was an "Undead Land" and there were 4 keeps therin. We had just killed a vampire (our priest used some super turning ability) and we assume the closest keep was his. A couple of guys thought it would be a good idea to head to the keep to destroy him before he could regenerate.

Our wizard had a wand of improved invisibility. We figured it best to sent just a couple of guys as keeping the whole party invisible with be too much trouble and take too many charges. So they set off on their carpet of flying toward the keep.

The DM, for whatever reason, didnt want the party heading in this direction or taking this course of action at this particular time. I think he even said so. When the two people continued toward the keep, he stuck a dread wraith on them, killing them in a few rounds.

They complained, and rightfully so, that if he really didnt want them going in that direction, he should have just put the dread wraith out there for them to see. Then they would have said "This is too much" and ran away. But instead it appears right up on them and attacks.

I know this has nothing to do with my original post, but someone asked about the dread wraith encounter so I thought I would explain it.

 

[Noumenon]

I wonder if he's purposely making the monsters fight with "stupid" hormone-driven tactics so that your party will be able to handle them. If every party member gets an AoO every round that's almost like an eight-person party.

 

[Rackhir]

I thought it was a creative and innovative response to a no-win situation.

I'd have given him bonus points for a clever idea.

Is it metagamy? Sure to a certain extent, but when all your other options lead to an almost certain death and you are working within a system that imperfectly models reality. Knocking your self unconscious and hoping the rest of the group can take it down is pretty smart.

 

[JVisgaitis]

Considered as a D&D-world tactic? Sheer genius.

Wow. Genius? Far from it. You think with 16 years of experience playing RPGs someone would learn that the game isn't all about the numbers... Shesh. That's metagaming to the extreme. I would have done the coup de grace too.

 

[knightofround]

Yeah I think its a stupid tactic. As other posters have said, a bluff check to play dead would be appropiate, probably with a circumstance bonus. Or if you really wanted to be hardcore, coup de grace yourself so the demon doesn't get the opportunity.

However, punching yourself in the face because you know via metagaming it's a guarenteed way to make yourself unconscience, and you know via metagaming that the vrock attack would push you past -10, and you know via metagaming that you can't out-bluff the Vrock, is a stupid gamist tactic. The next thing you know, you'll have PCs attacking each other with subdual damage so NPCs don't get a killshot with lethal damage.

If I were your DM I would make you roll a high DC Will save to see if you could actually knock yourself unconscience within 5 seconds.

I don't like the way your DM handled it, but really, how can you blame him for fighting metagaming with metagaming?