The party is made up of 4 characters that are all level 2:
an Elven ranger
a Dragonborn Paladin
a Warforged Barbarian
a Tabaxi Monk (myself)
At this point of the adventure our party has made our way to a new area they are unfamiliar with and we came across this tower/tall building. I have questions regarding 2 scenarios that emerged from this encounter.
Given that my character is a Tabaxi and has cat's claws with a climbing speed of 20 ft +10 ft from the Monk's bonuses , I told the DM that I wanted to climb the outside wall to reach a nearby window to take a look inside. The DM said I can't because there the walls are too smooth and vertical to do so. So my question here is:
1. if I use the Pitons that my character is carrying to try to climb the building, how does that work with my character's climbing speed?
While we were figuring out how to get inside, the group asked our barbarian to knock on the front door. He did . . . and a Bone Devil appeared to "greet" us and while we tried to avoid this fight, the dice rolls were not on our side that day and a fight ensued.
Now before we started that day's session, the DM made it clear that in this part of the campaign we were suppose to have 5 characters but our 5th was unable to join us that day. So he said he was going to scale back the encounters. He did this by not using the Bone Devil's +8 to Hit and just rolled standard 1d20s. However when the bone devil got a nat 20 and hit my character, he rolled a 1d8 (rolled a 3) + 12 = 15 for damage instead of rolling a 2d8+4 that the PHB says to do so during a critical hit. (Edit: As a side note my character has 15 hp) So my question here is.
2. Should I bring it up?/Ask him about the +12 damage?
3. Would this be considered rules lawyering if I do?
4. Is this something from older versions of D&D?
I'm asking these questions because I'm still fairly new to D&D and I want avoid unnecessary instances of ruining the fun for everyone, DM included. Especially since I get the feeling that this is an encounter that we are supposed to lose, ala Megaman X, and some story beats are suppose to occur here.
I should note that the session ended there because the DM had some personal matters come up and had to leave unexpectedly.
I would like to hear people's thoughts regarding these scenarios. And if people want to find the info of the Bone Devil, they can find it here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/bone-devil
Update:
From what I recently discovered the GM is running a Homebrew heavy game. With one of new players brought in, he had the player roll 6d10 and the resulting dice rolls are added to base 10 stats (I don't know what edition that's from, but this finally puts thing into perspective). So for example, one of the new players rolled a (10, 9, 4, 6, 4, 5), as a result, his character has base stats of 20, 19, 14, 16, 15. This is before the player will add racial bonuses.
It's after seeing this that I realized that a lot of the other players have really high base stats and that is the reason why the GM is having monsters deliver such high damage. Unfortunately for me, I choose to use the standard array method to create my character, effectively making my character very weak for these modified encounters and no doubt out of his league when compared to with the rest of the party. I originally wanted to use point buy but the GM didn't allow it because he considered to be an unfair to create a character.
But yea, this finally puts things into perspective and I honestly don't know what the best course of action is.
Update 2: Taking a step back and looking at my experience as a whole, I'm of the mind that some of the challenges stemming from the game is due to our group (myself included) simply just not being very familiar with D&D 5th edition.
So I'll highlight some positive moments and experiences I've had with the campaign thus far.
At level 1, we essentially did the module from the Phandalin book (The DM did mention this was the basis for his adventure but was going to do his own thing with it). I joined the party at the point in the story where the adventurers find the cave and are about to explore it.
Overall the party did really well. My character, along with another party member, manage to become friends with 2 dire-wolves and have them as pets. Because we have a ranger in the group, the DM made it clear that we can't really order the wolves to do what we tell them to and that they have their own agency. Plus, our group has a bad habit of forgetting to bring the wolves with us at times.
One of my favorite moments was when we went to explore this underground tomb and we encountered this Death Knight. My character was hidden in the shadows and ended up swiping off pieces of its armor to bring down its AC. This also seeped into our fight with the Death Knight. While the rest of the party was fighting it with its full attention on them, my character kept diving in and out of the shadows to take its shield and more of its armor. Thus encouraging us to play smart and working together as a team.
During a side mission where we were sent out by the Phandelin blacksmith, a mission that had us deal with Ogres that were eating people off the side of the road, the DM remembered that my character was a Tabaxi and had the blacksmith give my character with silver claw attachments so his clawed attacks can now be considered to be silvered weapons.
I really appreciate people getting upset for me regarding the issues that were brought up.
Like I said, I feel that some of the issues are from us just not being familiar with D&D 5e. While the others could stem from the DM's own experience of playing game, (he briefly mentioned that he was not DMing but playing 3 other games), so I'm guessing he's pick up those habits from other people.
Ultimately I just want to have fun with the group that I'm playing with. If it seems like it's not possible, then I'll just move on. These are people I've met online through some friends that I've known outside of the internet/discord.
Thanks again for all your feedback and if there more questions or want more context, feel free to ask.
1. "The DM said I can't because there the walls are too smooth and vertical to do so." It's a cop-out, but there are situations where even the most capable swimmers, climbers and flyers can't swim, climb, or fly. The GM is basically saying "I didn't prepare for a character to have the ability to climb, so don't." In terms of RAW, this is fine.
2. Yes, question him/her out-of-game. Unless that is an insanely strong bone devil, that +12 is waaaaaay too high. DO mention that critical hits are only supposed to double damage dice.
3. No. These are basic rules that are... basically being violated. The table should respect the basic rules, at least. We're talking how to determine hits and damage. If you aren't on the same page on THOSE rules, the game is on very shaky ground.
4. Sounds like it. Older versions usually straight up doubled damage from critical hits. I'm guessing this bone devil is particularly strong or has special enhancement to damage and should do +6 damage.
Remember you should be having fun too, and when your character is first being denied abilities, then is getting smacked in the face waaaaaaay harder than should be, that is a cause to say "Hey, about that."
PURE SPECULATION: It seems the GM might have been not having fun with it either (if (s)he was spreading denial of abilities across the table, everyone's faces were probably saying they weren't having fun) and decided to bounce on the session. A good GM RARELY has something come up during a session because they'll tell people that they're HOSTING SOMETHING and don't want to be disturbed unless it's really important. And really important things rarely spring up. If I'm correct about this, try to get together with the GM and go through learning the rules for 5e together. Then if (s)he's experienced, ask about their fun times with D&D. It should spark their desire to play more.
He did this by not using the Bone Devil's +8 to Hit and just rolled standard 1d20s. However when the bone dragon got a nat 20 and hit my character, he rolled a 1d8 (rolled a 3) + 12 = 15 for damage instead of rolling a 2d8+4 that the PHB says to do so during a critical hit. So my question here is.
2. Should I bring it up?/Ask him about the +12 damage?
3. Would this be considered rules lawyering if I do?
Bring it up after the game but only if you can successfully maintain a "hey, I'm not sure you realized how crits are intended to work in this edition" rather than a "you screwed me out of some HP" tone. The DM was already trying to rebalance a lone monster encounter on the fly for the wrong number of people, I'd guess he just mixed up the crit rules.
4. Is this something from older versions of D&D?
Not sure. In some previous editions, a critical hit automatically did max damage; on average that's equivalent to rolling the damage dice twice. Sounds to me like he accidentally combined "max damage" with "roll twice" and just added one extra maxed damage die - he used "1d8 + 8 + 4" instead of "1d8 + 1d8 + 4".
PURE SPECULATION: It seems the GM might have been not having fun with it either (if (s)he was spreading denial of abilities across the table, everyone's faces were probably saying they weren't having fun) and decided to bounce on the session. A good GM RARELY has something come up during a session because they'll tell people that they're HOSTING SOMETHING and don't want to be disturbed unless it's really important. And really important things rarely spring up. If I'm correct about this, try to get together with the GM and go through learning the rules for 5e together. Then if (s)he's experienced, ask about their fun times with D&D. It should spark their desire to play more.
With the matter of having to leave the session mid game, it was one those really important things that rarely springs up and the group was perfectly fine and understood why the DM had to leave.
The advice that you gave about learning the rules of 5e together seems like a good idea, I'll definitely give that a shot. I think I may also ask the dm what are some things that players do that make of DMing games so fun. I figure that way both sides can have a better understanding of what the other enjoys about D&D.
With regards to climbing the tower, I was asking about the Pitons because the item description says "When a wall doesn’t offer handholds and footholds, you can make your own. A piton is a steel spike with an eye through which you can loop a rope." So I was thinking of using those to help make walls of the outside tower more climbable.
Thank you so much for your feedback. I really appreciate it. This a game that we are playing in discord and we're using the beyond's dicebot but mostly for standard rolls like typing !roll 1d20+2 and so on.
There is another possibility. It’s possible that he didn’t use a Bone Devil as written but customized it. And another way of dealing with natural 20’s that I dislike but that some people love is to roll the same number of dice and double the total of the dice instead of rolling the dice two times. So he could have rolled a (3 x 2) + 9 for its damage instead of 2d8 + 9. He could have also goofed when he did the math, which is easy to do when you’re focusing on too many things at once. My favorite way to customize monsters is to adjust the bonuses that they get on their damage rolls because changing 1d8+4 to 1d8+9 is easy to do and remember on the fly.
I have seen specially designed rooms in dungeons before that would prevent climbing from working at all. But they’re usually trapped and part of the trap is preventing the PCs from being able to move. The Grease spell is one way to do that for example. But I suspect that he’s new to being a DM just like you’re new to playing. If that’s the case you probably caught him off guard with something that he wasn’t prepared for and that he didn’t know how to handle on the fly so he railroaded you into going the way he was prepared for you to go. I’m guilty of railroading my players too, and I suspect that most DMs do to some extent. But I try to avoid railroading them as much as possible since railroading them makes the game less fun for them and also makes my job of having fun and making it fun for them harder.
There is another possibility. It’s possible that he didn’t use a Bone Devil as written but customized it. And another way of dealing with natural 20’s that I dislike but that some people love is to roll the same number of dice and double the total of the dice instead of rolling the dice two times. So he could have rolled a (3 x 2) + 9 for its damage instead of 2d8 + 9. He could have also goofed when he did the math, which is easy to do when you’re focusing on too many things at once. My favorite way to customize monsters is to adjust the bonuses that they get on their damage rolls because changing 1d8+4 to 1d8+9 is easy to do and remember on the fly.
I can understand that. Thanks so much for the feedback. We are currently playing on discord and we're using the Avrae dicebot, so I'm sure he's still getting used to the new way to play as oppose to how he usually does. I just got caught by surprised because he was rolling 1d8 +12 for crit damage because the party is made up of level 2 characters and character's HP is 15. So getting taken out in one hit felt like overkill.
The DM might be playing where the normal damage on a crit is maximized and then roll the crit dice. So if a normal attack did 1d8+4 then the crit would be 8+4 = 12 + 1d8. You should ask if that is the way crits will work in the campaign.
Yeah I don't think the GM is gonna listen to reason. Our group currently has a tough time when it comes to meeting up recently but the GM is insistent that his games are designed to be for 5 players.
This past Saturday as two of us were waiting online for the others, GM included, to jump on and start the game. It became apparent that only 3 players would be available. One of the players was insisting that we have our missing teammates on autopilot.
But the GM just responded, with "Don't ***** at me if you get killed". Pointing out that my character was currently knocked out (With a character having only 15 hp, getting hit with 1d8+12 damage die was never gonna end well for me) and that one character on autopilot, we wouldn't get the full benefits of having the player actively being there . Intending to continue right where he left it off.
To which, another party member just stated. "If it's going to be impossible and not fun, why play then?"
GM responded with, "It's not going to be not fun. It's just going to be REALLY difficult."
Ultimately, we didn't do the session because by that point, the fun was taken out of it.
I tried to use this chance to ask the DM, "can we go over the homebrew rules then?"
GM responded with. "It's the same rules that were established at the beginning of the game." Even though he never established how he was going to do crit damage.
Currently, he's trying to fix the issue by inviting other people to play so we meet the 5 player quota. But at this point I'll give the campaign one more session because I've played with the these new invites and I'm hoping some new people will freshen up the game. However if it's not fun I'm just going to have to bow out and start playing Adventure Leauge games instead.
"It's the same rules that were established at the beginning of the game."
I think this requires calling out the GM on not knowing the rules that you are supposedly playing by. Who is this guy, J.J. Abrams?
Also, if he can't handle a player doing some wild stuff, and will throw out a flimsy excuse of why you can't do it, why can't he tone down the monsters and traps or whatever a little? Its not like you're splitting the party.
I suspect you might be right with your initial speculation, in which he's just not having fun with the campaign. I'll admit that I am fairly to d&d but I'm using this opportunity to learn about the different rules in the PHB and other sources.
I recently tried DMing and became very conscious about it and set out with the goal of making sure my players have fun. To help with that, the game that I ran was on discord, where all my players created a character on D&D beyond and uploaded their character sheets on Avrae dicebot that the site provides.
We used it to run combat encounters and that helps me streamline combat, so I can focus on the story telling and role-playing aspect of the game.
I try to be honest with my players and let them know ahead of time that I'm new to d&d with the intent of building trust with them. That way, if I make a mistake they can feel comfortable of pointing it out without issue.
But with this happening, it's making me think about whether the GM's is trying to play against the party instead of with the party. Making me wonder if in past encounters, he was trying to TPK us.
From what I recently happened discovered the GM is running a Homebrew heavy game. With one of new players brought in, he had the player roll 6d10 and the resulting dice rolls are added to base 10 stats (I don't know what edition that's from, but this finally puts thing into perspective). So for example, one of the new players rolled a (10, 9, 4, 6, 4, 5), as a result, his character has base stats of 20, 19, 14, 16, 15. This is before the player will add racial bonuses.
It's after seeing this that I realized that a lot of the other players have really high base stats and that is the reason why the GM is having monsters deliver such high damage. Unfortunately for me, I choose to use the standard array method to create my character, effectively making my character very weak for these modified encounters and no doubt out of his league when compared to with the rest of the party. I originally wanted to use point buy but the GM didn't allow it because he considered to be an unfair to create a character.
But yea, this finally puts things into perspective and I honestly don't know what the best course of action is.
One thing I can say for sure is that the GM has a poor ability to balance things for his players.
I suspect part of it is that he is unfamiliar with the rules, and by consequence is that he doesn't know how to build optimized characters. A wild guess, but perhaps he has played with more experienced players who walked all over him and he sees you getting walked all over as being part of being new or not taking the initiative to take advantage of the system. This is not what D&D is supposed to be. I'm going turn off my rude-limiter for a bit here.
At this point, you're notreally playing D&D. I'm going to call him Toby. This is Dungeons and Tobys. The game has the face of D&D, but the rules of Toby, which has recognizable stats, monsters, abilities, etc, to D&D, but is so far removed from D&D that it's now D&T. I bet he doesn't know the first thing about grappling in 5e. By itself, that's fine, but he's smacked your PC repeatedly. That's Not Okay. You've tried to work with him (presumably, from what you've shown here) and he seemingly mocks you for not going with what he's offered you. You've got limited options now: be the nice sucker and continue playing the role as the semi-incompetent character that all the others get to outperform to show how awesome they are (relying on the spirit of people gathering to have fun), ask what sounds cool to Toby and accept whatever homebrew offer God-Toby gives you and don't ask for what sounds cool to you (submit to D&T), learn Toby's rules to find a loophole to abuse the hell out of and screw the party by forcing Toby to TPK them while your character walks away rich (vengeance vs Toby using the crew), or quit.
Good sportsmanship would have you have a conversation with Todd to build a new character that isn't left behind by the others. And about the rules. You either have to put the rules in his face, telling him if these aren't the rules you're playing by, you need him to write out the house rules, and if he insists those ARE the rules, then unabashedly whip them out DURING PLAY and say, THESE ARE THE RULES YOU SAID WE ARE PLAYING BY, SO WHY AM I BEING DENIED ADVANTAGE? And... that's the nice version.
I will offer to help find the path of vengeance. You are a tabaxi monk. Your greatest threat is not Toby, it's the Elven Ranger and/or Dragonborn Paladin. Assuming you arranged your stats well enough, you can do this. If you take this path, you'll continue being the laughing mockery of the party- intentionally so- for example, running up to the enemy and then dramatically faking death 'when you see how scary he is', just to see how Toby handles attacks against helpless targets. While on watch at rest, place harmless spiders on your allies to see how Toby handles waking up. You get the idea. Bonus points if you have fun, making them laugh, while you discover their weaknesses. Then relish the moment you finally doom them all, watching Toby resignedly slaughter the PCs because he's too stiff to change his rules.
But if "I want avoid unnecessary instances of ruining the fun for everyone, DM included." ... just quit. It doesn't sound like you're having fun. Try with another group!
OR, better yet, learn the rules and become a GM yourself. And show Toby how it's done, no vengeance, just fun. By the sound of it, just knowing the rules will almost guarantee you can be a better GM. How does that sound?
*disclaimer: I love GMing and D&T could be fun. just doesn't sound fun to me. to be fair, I hate getting the shaft like what you're describing
There is no excuse, that the DM failed to tell you how to prepare your character. Seemingly, there was no session 0, and the DM didn't even take the party characters into account within his storytelling.
If he refuses to discuss all of the points raised by OP, I would go find a new group.
1) If you want to play with these folks then talk to the DM about rebuilding your character. If he says no ... walk away. It is the DMs fault for not telling you how to create your character in the first place. 10 + d10 will average 15.5 for all stats while standard array has a 15 as the single highest stat. There is no way these systems create comparable characters. In addition, the DM turning down your request to use point buy while allowing other folks to roll 10+d10 just shows a DM who is clueless about character creation. Even with point buy, you can't come close to the stats of other players using this system.
If the DM is using different rolling systems for different players (i.e. playing favorites) and doesn't see a problem with this ... walk away.
2) If folks are having fun then fine. However, even with high stats (even with 20 in all stats) ... a bone devil is a TPK for a party of four or five level 2s.
You mentioned an attack that was d8+12 ... this is just the DM making things up to try to scale it a bit to a party that should actually die. In fact, the text for the sting from a bone devil says: "Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) piercing damage plus 17 (5d6) poison damage" ... so there is +17 poison damage on top of the 2d8 +4 so it is possible that the DM was actually reducing the damage to +12 depending on the type of attack.
However, for critical hits, the number of static bonuses stay the same while the number of dice are doubled. In this case, the damage from a critical sting would be 4d8+4 + 5d6 ... some folks will double the poison damage (to 10d6) because there is no separate save against the damage (which would make it a separate attack) while others would not considering the poison a separate effect from the sting itself. Either way, a critical hit from a bone devil sting (average 42 damage) against a level 2 character has a very good chance of taking the character to negative their maximum hit points which would kill them instantly.
3) Anyway, whether you decide to keep playing with this group will depend on why you are playing with them and the DM. Are they friends? Is it fun? Are you having a good time? Does the DM treat everyone fairly and with respect or do they play favorites? (Is their significant other playing and they get more attention, better stuff and more good breaks?)
In the case of climbing the tower, it was likely a minor case of rail roading. For most normal towers, as a tabaxi with claws and a climb speed you shouldn't have any trouble scaling to a second story window to look in. (I watched a friend scale a two story smooth brick wall where the only hand and foot holds were the small mortar indentations between the bricks and climb onto a balcony on the second floor ... wearing sneakers and just using their hands ... he did free rock climbing for fun ... it was inside in a public space and he said he could climb it and another person said no way .. so he went ahead and did it (stupid but impressive) ... so I probably have a more open mind than many on what it is possible to climb).
The DM saying the tower was too smooth was just the DM deciding he didn't want to deal with the plot going in that direction. Once in a while, that isn't an issue, if they do it all the time consider walking away since rail roaded adventures aren't usually as much fun.
Taking a step back and looking at my experience as a whole, I'm of the mind that some of the challenges stemming from the game is due to our group (myself included) simply just not being very familiar with D&D 5th edition.
So I'll highlight some positive moments and experiences I've had with the campaign thus far.
At level 1, we essentially did the module from the Phandalin book (The DM did mention this was the basis for his adventure but was going to do his own thing with it). I joined the party at the point in the story where the adventurers find the cave and are about to explore it.
Overall the party did really well. My character, along with another party member, manage to become friends with 2 dire-wolves and have them as pets. Because we have a ranger in the group, the DM made it clear that we can't really order the wolves to do what we tell them to and that they have their own agency. Plus, our group has a bad habit of forgetting to bring the wolves with us at times.
One of my favorite moments was when we went to explore this underground tomb and we encountered this Death Knight. My character was hidden in the shadows and ended up swiping off pieces of its armor to bring down its AC. This also seeped into our fight with the Death Knight. While the rest of the party was fighting it with its full attention on them, my character kept diving in and out of the shadows to take its shield and more of its armor. Thus encouraging us to play smart and working together as a team.
During a side mission where we were sent out by the Phandelin blacksmith, a mission that had us deal with Ogres that were eating people off the side of the road, the DM remembered that my character was a Tabaxi and had the blacksmith give my character with silver claw attachments so his clawed attacks can now be considered to be silvered weapons.
I really appreciate people getting upset for me regarding the issues that were brought up.
Like I said, I feel that some of the issues are from us just not being familiar with D&D 5e. While the others could stem from the DM's own experience of playing game, (he briefly mentioned that he was not DMing but playing 3 other games), so I'm guessing he's pick up those habits from other people.
Ultimately I just want to have fun with the group that I'm playing with. If it seems like it's not possible, then I'll just move on. These are people I've met online through some friends that I've known outside of the internet/discord.
Thanks again for all your feedback and if there more questions or want more context, feel free to ask.
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First a bit of context.
The party is made up of 4 characters that are all level 2:
At this point of the adventure our party has made our way to a new area they are unfamiliar with and we came across this tower/tall building. I have questions regarding 2 scenarios that emerged from this encounter.
Given that my character is a Tabaxi and has cat's claws with a climbing speed of 20 ft +10 ft from the Monk's bonuses , I told the DM that I wanted to climb the outside wall to reach a nearby window to take a look inside. The DM said I can't because there the walls are too smooth and vertical to do so. So my question here is:
1. if I use the Pitons that my character is carrying to try to climb the building, how does that work with my character's climbing speed?
While we were figuring out how to get inside, the group asked our barbarian to knock on the front door. He did . . . and a Bone Devil
appeared to "greet" us and while we tried to avoid this fight, the dice rolls were not on our side that day and a fight ensued.
Now before we started that day's session, the DM made it clear that in this part of the campaign we were suppose to have 5 characters but our 5th was unable to join us that day. So he said he was going to scale back the encounters. He did this by not using the Bone Devil's +8 to Hit and just rolled standard 1d20s. However when the bone devil got a nat 20 and hit my character, he rolled a 1d8 (rolled a 3) + 12 = 15 for damage instead of rolling a 2d8+4 that the PHB says to do so during a critical hit. (Edit: As a side note my character has 15 hp) So my question here is.
2. Should I bring it up?/Ask him about the +12 damage?
3. Would this be considered rules lawyering if I do?
4. Is this something from older versions of D&D?
I'm asking these questions because I'm still fairly new to D&D and I want avoid unnecessary instances of ruining the fun for everyone, DM included. Especially since I get the feeling that this is an encounter that we are supposed to lose, ala Megaman X, and some story beats are suppose to occur here.
I should note that the session ended there because the DM had some personal matters come up and had to leave unexpectedly.
I would like to hear people's thoughts regarding these scenarios. And if people want to find the info of the Bone Devil, they can find it here: https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/bone-devil
Update:
From what I recently discovered the GM is running a Homebrew heavy game. With one of new players brought in, he had the player roll 6d10 and the resulting dice rolls are added to base 10 stats (I don't know what edition that's from, but this finally puts thing into perspective). So for example, one of the new players rolled a (10, 9, 4, 6, 4, 5), as a result, his character has base stats of 20, 19, 14, 16, 15. This is before the player will add racial bonuses.
It's after seeing this that I realized that a lot of the other players have really high base stats and that is the reason why the GM is having monsters deliver such high damage. Unfortunately for me, I choose to use the standard array method to create my character, effectively making my character very weak for these modified encounters and no doubt out of his league when compared to with the rest of the party. I originally wanted to use point buy but the GM didn't allow it because he considered to be an unfair to create a character.
But yea, this finally puts things into perspective and I honestly don't know what the best course of action is.
Update 2:
Taking a step back and looking at my experience as a whole, I'm of the mind that some of the challenges stemming from the game is due to our group (myself included) simply just not being very familiar with D&D 5th edition.
So I'll highlight some positive moments and experiences I've had with the campaign thus far.
At level 1, we essentially did the module from the Phandalin book (The DM did mention this was the basis for his adventure but was going to do his own thing with it). I joined the party at the point in the story where the adventurers find the cave and are about to explore it.
Overall the party did really well. My character, along with another party member, manage to become friends with 2 dire-wolves and have them as pets. Because we have a ranger in the group, the DM made it clear that we can't really order the wolves to do what we tell them to and that they have their own agency. Plus, our group has a bad habit of forgetting to bring the wolves with us at times.
One of my favorite moments was when we went to explore this underground tomb and we encountered this Death Knight. My character was hidden in the shadows and ended up swiping off pieces of its armor to bring down its AC. This also seeped into our fight with the Death Knight. While the rest of the party was fighting it with its full attention on them, my character kept diving in and out of the shadows to take its shield and more of its armor. Thus encouraging us to play smart and working together as a team.
During a side mission where we were sent out by the Phandelin blacksmith, a mission that had us deal with Ogres that were eating people off the side of the road, the DM remembered that my character was a Tabaxi and had the blacksmith give my character with silver claw attachments so his clawed attacks can now be considered to be silvered weapons.
I really appreciate people getting upset for me regarding the issues that were brought up.
Like I said, I feel that some of the issues are from us just not being familiar with D&D 5e. While the others could stem from the DM's own experience of playing game, (he briefly mentioned that he was not DMing but playing 3 other games), so I'm guessing he's pick up those habits from other people.
Ultimately I just want to have fun with the group that I'm playing with. If it seems like it's not possible, then I'll just move on. These are people I've met online through some friends that I've known outside of the internet/discord.
Thanks again for all your feedback and if there more questions or want more context, feel free to ask.
1. "The DM said I can't because there the walls are too smooth and vertical to do so." It's a cop-out, but there are situations where even the most capable swimmers, climbers and flyers can't swim, climb, or fly. The GM is basically saying "I didn't prepare for a character to have the ability to climb, so don't." In terms of RAW, this is fine.
2. Yes, question him/her out-of-game. Unless that is an insanely strong bone devil, that +12 is waaaaaay too high. DO mention that critical hits are only supposed to double damage dice.
3. No. These are basic rules that are... basically being violated. The table should respect the basic rules, at least. We're talking how to determine hits and damage. If you aren't on the same page on THOSE rules, the game is on very shaky ground.
4. Sounds like it. Older versions usually straight up doubled damage from critical hits. I'm guessing this bone devil is particularly strong or has special enhancement to damage and should do +6 damage.
Remember you should be having fun too, and when your character is first being denied abilities, then is getting smacked in the face waaaaaaay harder than should be, that is a cause to say "Hey, about that."
PURE SPECULATION: It seems the GM might have been not having fun with it either (if (s)he was spreading denial of abilities across the table, everyone's faces were probably saying they weren't having fun) and decided to bounce on the session. A good GM RARELY has something come up during a session because they'll tell people that they're HOSTING SOMETHING and don't want to be disturbed unless it's really important. And really important things rarely spring up. If I'm correct about this, try to get together with the GM and go through learning the rules for 5e together. Then if (s)he's experienced, ask about their fun times with D&D. It should spark their desire to play more.
Bring it up after the game but only if you can successfully maintain a "hey, I'm not sure you realized how crits are intended to work in this edition" rather than a "you screwed me out of some HP" tone. The DM was already trying to rebalance a lone monster encounter on the fly for the wrong number of people, I'd guess he just mixed up the crit rules.
Not sure. In some previous editions, a critical hit automatically did max damage; on average that's equivalent to rolling the damage dice twice. Sounds to me like he accidentally combined "max damage" with "roll twice" and just added one extra maxed damage die - he used "1d8 + 8 + 4" instead of "1d8 + 1d8 + 4".
With the matter of having to leave the session mid game, it was one those really important things that rarely springs up and the group was perfectly fine and understood why the DM had to leave.
The advice that you gave about learning the rules of 5e together seems like a good idea, I'll definitely give that a shot. I think I may also ask the dm what are some things that players do that make of DMing games so fun. I figure that way both sides can have a better understanding of what the other enjoys about D&D.
With regards to climbing the tower, I was asking about the Pitons because the item description says "When a wall doesn’t offer handholds and footholds, you can make your own. A piton is a steel spike with an eye through which you can loop a rope." So I was thinking of using those to help make walls of the outside tower more climbable.
Thank you so much for your feedback. I really appreciate it. This a game that we are playing in discord and we're using the beyond's dicebot but mostly for standard rolls like typing !roll 1d20+2 and so on.
There is another possibility. It’s possible that he didn’t use a Bone Devil as written but customized it. And another way of dealing with natural 20’s that I dislike but that some people love is to roll the same number of dice and double the total of the dice instead of rolling the dice two times. So he could have rolled a (3 x 2) + 9 for its damage instead of 2d8 + 9. He could have also goofed when he did the math, which is easy to do when you’re focusing on too many things at once. My favorite way to customize monsters is to adjust the bonuses that they get on their damage rolls because changing 1d8+4 to 1d8+9 is easy to do and remember on the fly.
I have seen specially designed rooms in dungeons before that would prevent climbing from working at all. But they’re usually trapped and part of the trap is preventing the PCs from being able to move. The Grease spell is one way to do that for example. But I suspect that he’s new to being a DM just like you’re new to playing. If that’s the case you probably caught him off guard with something that he wasn’t prepared for and that he didn’t know how to handle on the fly so he railroaded you into going the way he was prepared for you to go. I’m guilty of railroading my players too, and I suspect that most DMs do to some extent. But I try to avoid railroading them as much as possible since railroading them makes the game less fun for them and also makes my job of having fun and making it fun for them harder.
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I can understand that. Thanks so much for the feedback. We are currently playing on discord and we're using the Avrae dicebot, so I'm sure he's still getting used to the new way to play as oppose to how he usually does. I just got caught by surprised because he was rolling 1d8 +12 for crit damage because the party is made up of level 2 characters and character's HP is 15. So getting taken out in one hit felt like overkill.
The DM might be playing where the normal damage on a crit is maximized and then roll the crit dice. So if a normal attack did 1d8+4 then the crit would be 8+4 = 12 + 1d8. You should ask if that is the way crits will work in the campaign.
Yeah I don't think the GM is gonna listen to reason. Our group currently has a tough time when it comes to meeting up recently but the GM is insistent that his games are designed to be for 5 players.
This past Saturday as two of us were waiting online for the others, GM included, to jump on and start the game. It became apparent that only 3 players would be available. One of the players was insisting that we have our missing teammates on autopilot.
But the GM just responded, with "Don't ***** at me if you get killed". Pointing out that my character was currently knocked out (With a character having only 15 hp, getting hit with 1d8+12 damage die was never gonna end well for me) and that one character on autopilot, we wouldn't get the full benefits of having the player actively being there . Intending to continue right where he left it off.
To which, another party member just stated. "If it's going to be impossible and not fun, why play then?"
GM responded with, "It's not going to be not fun. It's just going to be REALLY difficult."
Ultimately, we didn't do the session because by that point, the fun was taken out of it.
I tried to use this chance to ask the DM, "can we go over the homebrew rules then?"
GM responded with. "It's the same rules that were established at the beginning of the game." Even though he never established how he was going to do crit damage.
Currently, he's trying to fix the issue by inviting other people to play so we meet the 5 player quota. But at this point I'll give the campaign one more session because I've played with the these new invites and I'm hoping some new people will freshen up the game. However if it's not fun I'm just going to have to bow out and start playing Adventure Leauge games instead.
"It's the same rules that were established at the beginning of the game."
I think this requires calling out the GM on not knowing the rules that you are supposedly playing by. Who is this guy, J.J. Abrams?
Also, if he can't handle a player doing some wild stuff, and will throw out a flimsy excuse of why you can't do it, why can't he tone down the monsters and traps or whatever a little? Its not like you're splitting the party.
I suspect you might be right with your initial speculation, in which he's just not having fun with the campaign. I'll admit that I am fairly to d&d but I'm using this opportunity to learn about the different rules in the PHB and other sources.
I recently tried DMing and became very conscious about it and set out with the goal of making sure my players have fun. To help with that, the game that I ran was on discord, where all my players created a character on D&D beyond and uploaded their character sheets on Avrae dicebot that the site provides.
We used it to run combat encounters and that helps me streamline combat, so I can focus on the story telling and role-playing aspect of the game.
I try to be honest with my players and let them know ahead of time that I'm new to d&d with the intent of building trust with them. That way, if I make a mistake they can feel comfortable of pointing it out without issue.
But with this happening, it's making me think about whether the GM's is trying to play against the party instead of with the party. Making me wonder if in past encounters, he was trying to TPK us.
From what I recently happened discovered the GM is running a Homebrew heavy game. With one of new players brought in, he had the player roll 6d10 and the resulting dice rolls are added to base 10 stats (I don't know what edition that's from, but this finally puts thing into perspective). So for example, one of the new players rolled a (10, 9, 4, 6, 4, 5), as a result, his character has base stats of 20, 19, 14, 16, 15. This is before the player will add racial bonuses.
It's after seeing this that I realized that a lot of the other players have really high base stats and that is the reason why the GM is having monsters deliver such high damage. Unfortunately for me, I choose to use the standard array method to create my character, effectively making my character very weak for these modified encounters and no doubt out of his league when compared to with the rest of the party. I originally wanted to use point buy but the GM didn't allow it because he considered to be an unfair to create a character.
But yea, this finally puts things into perspective and I honestly don't know what the best course of action is.
Any thoughts?
One thing I can say for sure is that the GM has a poor ability to balance things for his players.
I suspect part of it is that he is unfamiliar with the rules, and by consequence is that he doesn't know how to build optimized characters. A wild guess, but perhaps he has played with more experienced players who walked all over him and he sees you getting walked all over as being part of being new or not taking the initiative to take advantage of the system. This is not what D&D is supposed to be. I'm going turn off my rude-limiter for a bit here.
At this point, you're not really playing D&D. I'm going to call him Toby. This is Dungeons and Tobys. The game has the face of D&D, but the rules of Toby, which has recognizable stats, monsters, abilities, etc, to D&D, but is so far removed from D&D that it's now D&T. I bet he doesn't know the first thing about grappling in 5e. By itself, that's fine, but he's smacked your PC repeatedly. That's Not Okay. You've tried to work with him (presumably, from what you've shown here) and he seemingly mocks you for not going with what he's offered you. You've got limited options now: be the nice sucker and continue playing the role as the semi-incompetent character that all the others get to outperform to show how awesome they are (relying on the spirit of people gathering to have fun), ask what sounds cool to Toby and accept whatever homebrew offer God-Toby gives you and don't ask for what sounds cool to you (submit to D&T), learn Toby's rules to find a loophole to abuse the hell out of and screw the party by forcing Toby to TPK them while your character walks away rich (vengeance vs Toby using the crew), or quit.
Good sportsmanship would have you have a conversation with Todd to build a new character that isn't left behind by the others. And about the rules. You either have to put the rules in his face, telling him if these aren't the rules you're playing by, you need him to write out the house rules, and if he insists those ARE the rules, then unabashedly whip them out DURING PLAY and say, THESE ARE THE RULES YOU SAID WE ARE PLAYING BY, SO WHY AM I BEING DENIED ADVANTAGE? And... that's the nice version.
I will offer to help find the path of vengeance. You are a tabaxi monk. Your greatest threat is not Toby, it's the Elven Ranger and/or Dragonborn Paladin. Assuming you arranged your stats well enough, you can do this. If you take this path, you'll continue being the laughing mockery of the party- intentionally so- for example, running up to the enemy and then dramatically faking death 'when you see how scary he is', just to see how Toby handles attacks against helpless targets. While on watch at rest, place harmless spiders on your allies to see how Toby handles waking up. You get the idea. Bonus points if you have fun, making them laugh, while you discover their weaknesses. Then relish the moment you finally doom them all, watching Toby resignedly slaughter the PCs because he's too stiff to change his rules.
But if "I want avoid unnecessary instances of ruining the fun for everyone, DM included." ... just quit. It doesn't sound like you're having fun. Try with another group!
OR, better yet, learn the rules and become a GM yourself. And show Toby how it's done, no vengeance, just fun. By the sound of it, just knowing the rules will almost guarantee you can be a better GM. How does that sound?
*disclaimer: I love GMing and D&T could be fun. just doesn't sound fun to me. to be fair, I hate getting the shaft like what you're describing
Bad calls by the DM in several occasion.
There is no excuse, that the DM failed to tell you how to prepare your character. Seemingly, there was no session 0, and the DM didn't even take the party characters into account within his storytelling.
If he refuses to discuss all of the points raised by OP, I would go find a new group.
After reading your update ..
1) If you want to play with these folks then talk to the DM about rebuilding your character. If he says no ... walk away. It is the DMs fault for not telling you how to create your character in the first place. 10 + d10 will average 15.5 for all stats while standard array has a 15 as the single highest stat. There is no way these systems create comparable characters. In addition, the DM turning down your request to use point buy while allowing other folks to roll 10+d10 just shows a DM who is clueless about character creation. Even with point buy, you can't come close to the stats of other players using this system.
If the DM is using different rolling systems for different players (i.e. playing favorites) and doesn't see a problem with this ... walk away.
2) If folks are having fun then fine. However, even with high stats (even with 20 in all stats) ... a bone devil is a TPK for a party of four or five level 2s.
You mentioned an attack that was d8+12 ... this is just the DM making things up to try to scale it a bit to a party that should actually die. In fact, the text for the sting from a bone devil says: "Hit: 13 (2d8 + 4) piercing damage plus 17 (5d6) poison damage" ... so there is +17 poison damage on top of the 2d8 +4 so it is possible that the DM was actually reducing the damage to +12 depending on the type of attack.
However, for critical hits, the number of static bonuses stay the same while the number of dice are doubled. In this case, the damage from a critical sting would be 4d8+4 + 5d6 ... some folks will double the poison damage (to 10d6) because there is no separate save against the damage (which would make it a separate attack) while others would not considering the poison a separate effect from the sting itself. Either way, a critical hit from a bone devil sting (average 42 damage) against a level 2 character has a very good chance of taking the character to negative their maximum hit points which would kill them instantly.
3) Anyway, whether you decide to keep playing with this group will depend on why you are playing with them and the DM. Are they friends? Is it fun? Are you having a good time? Does the DM treat everyone fairly and with respect or do they play favorites? (Is their significant other playing and they get more attention, better stuff and more good breaks?)
In the case of climbing the tower, it was likely a minor case of rail roading. For most normal towers, as a tabaxi with claws and a climb speed you shouldn't have any trouble scaling to a second story window to look in. (I watched a friend scale a two story smooth brick wall where the only hand and foot holds were the small mortar indentations between the bricks and climb onto a balcony on the second floor ... wearing sneakers and just using their hands ... he did free rock climbing for fun ... it was inside in a public space and he said he could climb it and another person said no way .. so he went ahead and did it (stupid but impressive) ... so I probably have a more open mind than many on what it is possible to climb).
The DM saying the tower was too smooth was just the DM deciding he didn't want to deal with the plot going in that direction. Once in a while, that isn't an issue, if they do it all the time consider walking away since rail roaded adventures aren't usually as much fun.
"An un-scale-able tower... to others insisting this is bad writing/bad DMing"
Nobody said that... o.O
Sorry for the typo. It's a Bone Devil.
Taking a step back and looking at my experience as a whole, I'm of the mind that some of the challenges stemming from the game is due to our group (myself included) simply just not being very familiar with D&D 5th edition.
So I'll highlight some positive moments and experiences I've had with the campaign thus far.
At level 1, we essentially did the module from the Phandalin book (The DM did mention this was the basis for his adventure but was going to do his own thing with it). I joined the party at the point in the story where the adventurers find the cave and are about to explore it.
Overall the party did really well. My character, along with another party member, manage to become friends with 2 dire-wolves and have them as pets. Because we have a ranger in the group, the DM made it clear that we can't really order the wolves to do what we tell them to and that they have their own agency. Plus, our group has a bad habit of forgetting to bring the wolves with us at times.
One of my favorite moments was when we went to explore this underground tomb and we encountered this Death Knight. My character was hidden in the shadows and ended up swiping off pieces of its armor to bring down its AC. This also seeped into our fight with the Death Knight. While the rest of the party was fighting it with its full attention on them, my character kept diving in and out of the shadows to take its shield and more of its armor. Thus encouraging us to play smart and working together as a team.
During a side mission where we were sent out by the Phandelin blacksmith, a mission that had us deal with Ogres that were eating people off the side of the road, the DM remembered that my character was a Tabaxi and had the blacksmith give my character with silver claw attachments so his clawed attacks can now be considered to be silvered weapons.
I really appreciate people getting upset for me regarding the issues that were brought up.
Like I said, I feel that some of the issues are from us just not being familiar with D&D 5e. While the others could stem from the DM's own experience of playing game, (he briefly mentioned that he was not DMing but playing 3 other games), so I'm guessing he's pick up those habits from other people.
Ultimately I just want to have fun with the group that I'm playing with. If it seems like it's not possible, then I'll just move on. These are people I've met online through some friends that I've known outside of the internet/discord.
Thanks again for all your feedback and if there more questions or want more context, feel free to ask.