This thread was marked as Locked by Sedge.
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign inThis thread was marked as Locked by Sedge.
With all respect, this is simply not true!
I am a DM. I've never complained about my players breaking our game and I've never broken our game. Since I am the DM, I have the final say on which rules we use and which we don't. Doesn't mean the players doesn't have a say, doesn't mean I'm lazy, it's a part of being a DM.
Ludo ergo sum!
You keep saying stuff like this with regards to flight. You know D&D doesn't require dungeons and most of the time the adventurers will be outside, right? How do you make a better dungeon so that never becomes an issue?
I really think banning racial flight speed is a very fair restriction. It really is quite powerful and moreso at low level.
And what are you even implying with that? Make the dungeon only have 10 foot high ceilings? Put traps above head height? Give every monster in your game flight or ranged attacks?
It really seems like you are arguing just to argue. (Also, practice quoting. It is hard to pick your points out from theirs the way you do it. DDB has a quote box in their text editor specifically for this.)
I agree with others' sentiment about this thread. It feels strangely confrontational; whether you intend it to or not. A personal rant on a perceived injustice, that I'm not sure many would agree with you on.
I'm afraid that's all I can say about the topic, beyond 'I disagree'. I'm a flipping amazing DM, and so are all my DM friends, so I have no idea what you're talking about.
A suggestion: only be a DM, and you don't have to subject yourself to this (evidently) highly vexing issue.
No absolutely not. My nickname comes from a character I played for several years, so it has absolutely nothing to do with what I've done as a game master.
You said ALL DM's. Since I am a DM and it doesn't apply to me, the logical conclusion is that the first premise cannot be true.
I never said the only vote that counted was mine. That is you putting words in my mouth. I said "I have the final say". That means if there is discussions on how to understand a rule, I will make the final call if necessary. It's also my call that I've said that in our current campaign we do not use feats. Why? Because I know at least half of my players wouldn't have the time to read through them all. Thus a made a decision on behalf of the group. I didn't do it to limit the players, I did it to make it easy for them as they are all new to D&D as a system.
I can assure you that my players would never stay silent in fear of reprisal. Actually most of them cares far less about the rules than I do. That's another reason I've chosen to cut some of them.
Ludo ergo sum!
I disagree with the premise of your question. When you say that DMs "get their butts kicked" by players or that they "can't even TPK" the party, I understand that to mean you think the DM is the opponent of the players. That is not the DMs job in my view. The DM can always TPK the party if they want to - just have 12 extra dragons turn up, as is entirely within their power. I apologise if I have misinterpreted your views, but that is what I got from reading your post.
In my view the DM's job is to provide an interesting challenge for all the players in the party, and to help tell an interesting story.
So, where in that job might restricting a player's character design choice (nerfing) be necessary? Three reasons occur to me:
1. Maintaining rough balance between character power levels. As I said above, the job is to challenge ALL players. If one player is twice as powerful as the others in a game then an otherwise regular-difficulty encounter will be no challenge for one and nearly deadly for others.
2. Maintaining story theme. The DM is doing the heavy lifting on story creation, and may remove some player options to try and help the story stay thematically consistent. For example, a constantly flying player will require all encounters to account for that. If the setting of the story does not have a sensible flying enemy then it might easily descend into farce.
3. Discouraging repetitive player behaviour / encouraging imaginative solutions. If a character has one very over-powered feature/spell/attack, then it would be very tempting indeed to always use it. Indeed it is strategically irresponsible to not. This path leads to repetition, and in my opinion, boredom.
Now you are free to call this sort of reasoning laziness if you want, but I think it is absolutely the DMs job. It is obviously best to lay all this out and agree with the players before a campaign begins, but in extreme cases a DM may feel it necessary to deny access to some new feature later in the game, or even actually nerf a single player to bring their power level down to match the party. As a DM I have done this - arranged for a specific magic item to be stolen from a player (gave them a quest hook to get it back) until it better matched the party's power level, and as a player I would not want to play at a table where the DM was unwilling to do this. I consider it a very important part of their job, not laziness.
Locking this thread, as is has deteriorated to inflammatory commentary.
Thank you all who provided feedback to the original post. This discussion has come to a close.