Why you should never assume OR-- How I screwed my character over with a single choice

[Asmor]

So today's the day I've been waiting for for months... We resumed our D&D campaign after a brief D20 Modern stint and a one-shot of another game. I was making a new character, level 17, and had in the interrim spent countless hours crafting 4 or 5 different characters, finally settling on a sorcerer/fiend-blooded/archmage. I gave her a nice selection of spells, and the crowning piece was Aspect of the Chromatic Dragon, from Dragon Magic, which turns you into an Aspect of Tiamat. It requires your character to be evil, so I made my character evil, and pretty much everything just sort of fell into place from there. I was a human but had been raised by a splinter group of Drow who believed I would become a god someday.

So anyways, game day finally comes, I hand my character sheet to the DM, he has no problems which surprised the hell out of me. He allows literally anything that's published, 3.0, 3.5, third party, anything, but he usually vetoes equipment randomly and so I thought he'd make me get rid of something. But nope. I should mention at this point that my character sheet is just a well-formatted text document, not an actual character sheet, so the stuff is just on there as I threw it on.

So we're talking, somehow alignment comes up, and the DM says something like "well, I've never allowed evil characters in my campaign." This comes as a shock to me, because I thought another character was evil (he's a drow pirate, and looking back I really don't have any reason to think that other than the fact that he's a drow pirate). So I say "I'm evil..." "I thought you were chaotic neutral?" "No, but I guess I can be. It's no biggie." and I write that on my sheet, I'd forgotten to put it down earlier when I typed it up.

Anyways, we have one small fight and my spells bounce off the earth elemental that has SR 30-something. No big deal. We're fighting in the hold of a ship, though, so I can't use Aspect. Then we have another fight against a Chaos Roc, a colossal creature, up on the top deck. I try to cast a couple spells, fail to beat its SR after rolling a 17, and then the following round I use Aspect and proceed to bite it, hitting with 4 heads, one crit, and dealing 84 damage.

The other players think it's pretty cool, I show off the monster to them and the DM. No problem. Then a player says "Wow, that's a level 8 spell?" and I flip to it and hand it to him...

Which is when he says "Uhh, did you read the last line of the spell?"

Yep. Must be evil to cast. Well crap. We retcon the damage I just did, and I spend the rest of the combat passing since all my other spells give SR and I'm flipping through books finding something else to take.

I never did find a replacement spell, and that was so central to my image of the character that I really, really am turned off of the idea of playing her... I mean, I can probably get over it, but the fact is that I am (or, at least, I FEEL) totally useless in combat since I can't hit anything with SR. (Incidentally, I'm not looking for ideas... I'm going to post in the rules forum asking for any tips on how to make the character more effective).

I should also mention that I don't blame anyone. It's solely my own fault for assuming that I could be evil. It still sucks, though.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

 

[Nyaricus]

This isn't really why you should never assume, but rather why you should never lie.

Not trying to be mean here, but as soon as you knew it was going to be a non-evil party (which likely should have been staed in the first place by the DM), why didn't you swap out that 8th level spell which had the requirement of "must be evil"? Or, maybe more importantly, why did you still decide to use a banned spell, even though you obviously knew it was banned? That was a pretty lame move, IMO.

Again, not trying to be mean here. But, essentually, you were trying to cheat in a game - and I don't like cheaters.

cheers,
--N

 

[boolean]

This isn't really why you should never assume, but rather why you should never lie.

Not trying to be mean here, but as soon as you knew it was going to be a non-evil party (which likely should have been staed in the first place by the DM), why didn't you swap out that 8th level spell which had the requirement of "must be evil"? Or, maybe more importantly, why did you still decide to use a banned spell, even though you obviously knew it was banned? That was a pretty lame move, IMO.

Again, not trying to be mean here. But, essentually, you were trying to cheat in a game - and I don't like cheaters.

I seemed like a simple mistake to me. The spell was a legal selection when he created the character, and he forgot about that restriction when he was forced to change the character to Neutral.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

Hmm, you know I'd rather have a dm that spells out what they do allow than a blase one that gives seemingly unlimited options. Then spend a session devoted to character building.

Otherwise people might turn up and have a situation like this.

 

[maransreth]

Lose the attitude please - don't be rude to other forum members - Plane Sailing

 

[Glyfair]

Hmm, you know I'd rather have a dm that spells out what they do allow than a blase one that gives seemingly unlimited options. Then spend a session devoted to character building.

Otherwise people might turn up and have a situation like this.

I have to agree. I never allow evil characters in my game, but I have always spelled it out in the beginning of the game (in fact, I even state all neutral characters have to at least lean towards good).

 

[glass]

I seemed like a simple mistake to me. The spell was a legal selection when he created the character, and he forgot about that restriction when he was forced to change the character to Neutral.

That was my reading, too, FWIW.


glass.

 

[Hunter In Darkness]

dosent seem to me like he tryed to cheat just was thinking theyed had evil p;c's be na d seems like he forgot that an al change would affect his p;c like that bummer ...ask the dm if u could chang pc's u can simply say she went all evil witch he does not allow sence she was onna be b4 hand and ask to change

 

[Imruphel]

Did you ask the DM for his rules first? Has he ever spelt out his character creation rules to the group before?

As for the aspect of Tiamat spell, as a cleric of Tiamat can be LN perhaps the spell should also be able to be cast by non-Good rather than Evil only alignments? Maybe your DM would accept that argument?

dosent seem to me like he tryed to cheat just was thinking theyed had evil p;c's be na d seems like he forgot that an al change would affect his p;c like that bummer ...ask the dm if u could chang pc's u can simply say she went all evil witch he does not allow sence she was onna be b4 hand and ask to change

Referring to Blazing Saddles, "Authentic frontier gibberish"; what language are you typing in?