Hello there, I'm brand new to dungeons and dragons and a friend invited me to play. They were lvl 9, so I made a sorlock. I feel like most of the things that I do are punished and I wanted to better understand if this is how the game works.
I took pact of the chain as I wanted to have a familiar to help us scout. We were in a dense forest and my familiar was an imp. The imp shapechanged into a raven. Demons that were flying from a nearby cave spotted him and started flying towards us as "they felt suspicious" - we are talking more than 100 feet away. I felt terrible and sent my imp flying north, the imp had to do a deception check. I then later dismissed the imp.
We get to the cave and my imp shapeshift into a spider... a blue dragon "obliterates the imp" and then unborrows and the fight breaks.
Our next adventure, I have my imp goes invisible and scout into a different cave --- "a ray of light "fries" the imp...
Move on to our next adventure... we get locked up into a room and a portal starts to open and a huge demon hand tries to get through the portal. Our rogue tries to unlock the door and is unable. I look through the key hole and try to use misty step to see if I can unlock it from the other side. I bounce against the wall and take 22 dmg. The demon comes out and invelops us in a dark room and to my character, our friends are now demons. I decide to use blink to see if I can go to the etheral plan and better assess the situation. This time I bounce against the ceiling and take 30 dmg. I use mage hand to see if I can open the door from the other side. The DM says, the mage hand is unable to get close to the door.
In short, I feel that nothing that I do works, and it ends up hurting me or endangering the party. This is my 4th or 5th session. Any advice? Is this how it was supposed to work?
I tried to pick spells that I hoped to help us with sticky situations and I always heard that DnD is awesome because you can do cool stuff that your limited in rpg games.
Talk to your GM, tell him how you feel, and have him clarify what the playstyle and expectations of the campaign are. Basically, have a session zero/orientation.
Different GMs and groups have different preferences and playstyles, so if you are not vibing with your current group, you may want to switch groups.
Talk to you DM. Just based on your summary, I feel like they're misreading rules and also meta gaming.
Your raven should have been fine. Birds in woods aren't suspicious unless you had your imp do something seriously unbirdlike.
Your spider should have been fine. Why would a dragon blast a spider? Unless it got caught in an area spell it should have been fine.
And why was a Ray of Light spell cast on an otherwise empty area? Did the DM say they heard the imp flying or something?
As far as your locked room... misty step specifically says you teleport to an unoccupied space. So no, bouncing off walls doesn't happen. Same with Blink. You materialise in an unoccupied space. That includes unoccupied by walls and stuff. Talk to your DM.
Making use of your familiar is what’s expected. Killing it all the time is not funny and would start to feel personal to me as well. Definitely talk to the DM and see what their problem is. If they just hate familiars, I don’t know what you can do about that. But it wouldn’t hurt to remind them that familiars have been a part of D&D for a long time. Quick reference to Liam / Caleb in the second season of Critical Role: he used his familiar all the time and it wasn’t just stomped on every 5 minutes.
I’m confused by the shape changing comment. A familiar doesn’t shapechange, you chose it’s type and it stays like that until you dismiss it and recast find familiar which takes a full hour to do and 10gp in components. So it sounds like you are either using homebrew rules or misreading the rules. Either way you need to discuss with the dm.
I’m confused by the shape changing comment. A familiar doesn’t shapechange, you chose it’s type and it stays like that until you dismiss it and recast find familiar which takes a full hour to do and 10gp in components. So it sounds like you are either using homebrew rules or misreading the rules. Either way you need to discuss with the dm.
The Imp (familiar variant) can shapechange into other forms (raven, spider, and a rat) without issue, no need to dismiss and resummon.
Sorry, but to me it just seems like your DM is either overwhelmed with DMming - or a jerk. I would suggest talking to him in private, telling him that you feel saddened/harassed by his illogical, spiteful and pretty random "countermeasures" (at least thats the vibe i get from it) to using your familiar for what it is intended to. D&D should be a cooperative game, not DM vs Player.
I would expect all of those things from a player. You're doing it right. It sounds to me like your DM has trouble handling player actions that go against what he expects from the encounter. It's ok in some cases where maybe you're in a boss fight and he doesn't want you to just run. Then maybe a magical force keeps you from using misty step to get out, but doing a good chunk of damage on top of that is a little punishing. Scouting from players can be a problem for DMs who like to keep things secret until they just jump out. The DM just needs to learn how to deal with this without just shutting players down. There could also be some legit reasons for the DM actions. You can also talk with them after the session to find out why something happened. The ray of light could have been a trap that would have hit anyone who entered. The raven might have been suspicous because birds like that don't reside in the area. I don't know why a dragon would just up and fry a spider, but maybe there was a magical alarm of some sort. Even if there were legit reasons, the DM shouldn't be making encouters with the idea of always countering player abilities. It's fun for players to use their skills and creativity to overcome problems. So anyway, as usual, talk with your DM.
as a (only slightly) dissenting opinion, i say your familiar saved lives that day. rather than some player character eating a surprise round of lightning or ray beams it's the familiar. nice! ...except, beginning every combat with a surprise that just happens to obliterate the scout is more lazy the third time than it was shocking the first.
as for bouncing off walls and ceiling for big chunks of your health bar, that's the opposite of lazy: it's unnecessary and excessive. you're right to feel picked on, but i doubt it's meant to be malicious. that is the dm trying to 'even things out' so things still retain their danger and mystique. the next thing i'd expect is a character going down and then here come the fudged monster attacks. 'balance' in the other direction. it's a clumsy dungeon master who can't keep their thumb off the scales.
talk constructively with the dm. maybe suggest an official adventure starting from level 1, if you think they'd be open to it. the trap for new dungeon masters is all the cool stuff and how easy it is to throw it all in one big arena all at once. they're going to need time and practice to get better (whether it's with you or not). good luck to you and to your dm! i hope it was interesting, regardless!
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Sounds like your DM is against clever actions by the players and is just throwing out excuses to punish you for doing so; and,
Your DM has no idea how spells work and is just punishing you for it. 22 damage for "pumping" into a wall? That's not how Misty Step works to begin with, and that is a significant amount of damage that would imply you either smashed into a spiked wall or hit that wall at a falling speed.
Honestly, I'd bow out from that table as it just sounds more like a DM that wants to use the game to punish players than to actually create a fun game that gives players space to play their classes
I agree with other posters, it sounds like your DM doesn't understand that these are things the game allows and encourages players to do, and thinks they have to balance against them (either because they mistakenly believe these abilities are "too strong" or because they've planned events in a very specific way that doesn't account for player unpredictability). Either way, it doesn't sound like you're playing with the most experienced DM if you're level 9 and they're still not used to players creatively problem solving. Either that or they're just adversarial and using you to enact some power fantasy.
If it's the first option, have a chat with them out of game and bring up some of these points and get their perspective to come to an understanding. If it's the second option, run. Do not play dnd with them, you will not have fun, because your fun isn't something an adversarial DM cares about.
Although I agree with most of the advice here, scouting familiars getting murdered makes complete sense to me in many situations.
These characters live in a world where Find Familiar exists. They know how it works and what people use it for. Thus any rat, bird, or spider wandering into a paranoid dragons lair is absolutely getting roasted. Undefined invisible thing creeping into my cave? Yeah, it's getting blasted if it's not Hiding.
Now I'm not going to have the castle guards shoot down every crow that flies over, but when you send something into a confined space in enemy territory you should moderate your expectations as to how it's going to turn out. You're probably not the first one who's tried it.
There are dragons with a burrowing speed, such as blue dragons, brass dragons, and crystal dragons. They also have blindsight, which based on the RAW description would let them "see" something moving above them within range. Now, blasting a spider does seem a bit excessive given that, but it's entirely within a blue dragon's kit.
Not spider invasion specifically, but plenty of dragons love the ambush angle. Lie in wait near their hoard, erupt behind would be thieves to trap them before killing them. And blindsight actually is automatic detection of anything that's not hiding within the radius, that's literally how all sight works in D&D. This specific example does seem a bit excessively punitive, but all of the basic factors check out. Dragon lies in wait below, something moves above it, dragon's senses detect it, dragon attacks. It literally describes in the blue dragon description how they hunt in this manner. Honestly, if the dragon knew or suspected it was being hunted, the whole scenario is pretty reasonable even.
Hello there, I'm brand new to dungeons and dragons and a friend invited me to play. They were lvl 9, so I made a sorlock. I feel like most of the things that I do are punished and I wanted to better understand if this is how the game works.
I took pact of the chain as I wanted to have a familiar to help us scout. We were in a dense forest and my familiar was an imp. The imp shapechanged into a raven. Demons that were flying from a nearby cave spotted him and started flying towards us as "they felt suspicious" - we are talking more than 100 feet away. I felt terrible and sent my imp flying north, the imp had to do a deception check. I then later dismissed the imp.
We get to the cave and my imp shapeshift into a spider... a blue dragon "obliterates the imp" and then unborrows and the fight breaks.
Our next adventure, I have my imp goes invisible and scout into a different cave --- "a ray of light "fries" the imp...
Move on to our next adventure... we get locked up into a room and a portal starts to open and a huge demon hand tries to get through the portal. Our rogue tries to unlock the door and is unable. I look through the key hole and try to use misty step to see if I can unlock it from the other side. I bounce against the wall and take 22 dmg. The demon comes out and invelops us in a dark room and to my character, our friends are now demons. I decide to use blink to see if I can go to the etheral plan and better assess the situation. This time I bounce against the ceiling and take 30 dmg. I use mage hand to see if I can open the door from the other side. The DM says, the mage hand is unable to get close to the door.
In short, I feel that nothing that I do works, and it ends up hurting me or endangering the party. This is my 4th or 5th session. Any advice? Is this how it was supposed to work?
I tried to pick spells that I hoped to help us with sticky situations and I always heard that DnD is awesome because you can do cool stuff that your limited in rpg games.
Thank you in advance!
This sounds to me like a problem with your DM rather than a problem with your character. I've used familiars in the past and not encountered such problems.
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Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
I agree with other posters, it sounds like your DM doesn't understand that these are things the game allows and encourages players to do, and thinks they have to balance against them (either because they mistakenly believe these abilities are "too strong" or because they've planned events in a very specific way that doesn't account for player unpredictability). Either way, it doesn't sound like you're playing with the most experienced DM if you're level 9 and they're still not used to players creatively problem solving. Either that or they're just adversarial and using you to enact some power fantasy.
If it's the first option, have a chat with them out of game and bring up some of these points and get their perspective to come to an understanding. If it's the second option, run. Do not play dnd with them, you will not have fun, because your fun isn't something an adversarial DM cares about.
As a DM that who has just recently started to be on the receiving end of creative familiar usage, this DM's response does very much seem like what is being described here. I myself do not do this, but I can certainly understand how a clever imp user can pull the rug out from under the DM quite easily, having had that done to me several times.
Thank you everyone for the comments, I'll try to talk to the DM. Sorry on the delay I was out in Iceland for 2 weeks hiking :)
If the DM admits to the above when talking to them, I hope you can reach a compromise with them because it seems that the DM is overwhelmed by the notion that you can use your imp to avoid harm to yourself or your party. They may feel you are circumventing their encounters and responding in a malicious way. It could be without them even realizing it if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Personally, I try to reward my players when they do stuff like this. Playing smart is so much more fun than barrelling into every situation and smashing their way out.
To somewhat defend the DM -- any effect that detects or keys off of creature type (such as detect evil and good) will reveal a familiar, and 9th level is more than high enough level that it's reasonable for bad guys to have made enough preparation that it will be necessary to be clever to spy on them, at least in more secure areas (for example, an evil temple that's protected by hallow or forbiddance), but it does sound like he was being pretty ham handed, and countermeasures shouldn't mean your ability is useless, just limited.
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Hello there, I'm brand new to dungeons and dragons and a friend invited me to play. They were lvl 9, so I made a sorlock. I feel like most of the things that I do are punished and I wanted to better understand if this is how the game works.
I took pact of the chain as I wanted to have a familiar to help us scout. We were in a dense forest and my familiar was an imp. The imp shapechanged into a raven. Demons that were flying from a nearby cave spotted him and started flying towards us as "they felt suspicious" - we are talking more than 100 feet away. I felt terrible and sent my imp flying north, the imp had to do a deception check. I then later dismissed the imp.
We get to the cave and my imp shapeshift into a spider... a blue dragon "obliterates the imp" and then unborrows and the fight breaks.
Our next adventure, I have my imp goes invisible and scout into a different cave --- "a ray of light "fries" the imp...
Move on to our next adventure... we get locked up into a room and a portal starts to open and a huge demon hand tries to get through the portal. Our rogue tries to unlock the door and is unable. I look through the key hole and try to use misty step to see if I can unlock it from the other side. I bounce against the wall and take 22 dmg. The demon comes out and invelops us in a dark room and to my character, our friends are now demons. I decide to use blink to see if I can go to the etheral plan and better assess the situation. This time I bounce against the ceiling and take 30 dmg.
I use mage hand to see if I can open the door from the other side. The DM says, the mage hand is unable to get close to the door.
In short, I feel that nothing that I do works, and it ends up hurting me or endangering the party. This is my 4th or 5th session. Any advice? Is this how it was supposed to work?
I tried to pick spells that I hoped to help us with sticky situations and I always heard that DnD is awesome because you can do cool stuff that your limited in rpg games.
Thank you in advance!
Talk to your GM, tell him how you feel, and have him clarify what the playstyle and expectations of the campaign are. Basically, have a session zero/orientation.
Different GMs and groups have different preferences and playstyles, so if you are not vibing with your current group, you may want to switch groups.
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Talk to you DM. Just based on your summary, I feel like they're misreading rules and also meta gaming.
Your raven should have been fine. Birds in woods aren't suspicious unless you had your imp do something seriously unbirdlike.
Your spider should have been fine. Why would a dragon blast a spider? Unless it got caught in an area spell it should have been fine.
And why was a Ray of Light spell cast on an otherwise empty area? Did the DM say they heard the imp flying or something?
As far as your locked room... misty step specifically says you teleport to an unoccupied space. So no, bouncing off walls doesn't happen. Same with Blink. You materialise in an unoccupied space. That includes unoccupied by walls and stuff. Talk to your DM.
Making use of your familiar is what’s expected. Killing it all the time is not funny and would start to feel personal to me as well. Definitely talk to the DM and see what their problem is. If they just hate familiars, I don’t know what you can do about that. But it wouldn’t hurt to remind them that familiars have been a part of D&D for a long time. Quick reference to Liam / Caleb in the second season of Critical Role: he used his familiar all the time and it wasn’t just stomped on every 5 minutes.
I’m confused by the shape changing comment. A familiar doesn’t shapechange, you chose it’s type and it stays like that until you dismiss it and recast find familiar which takes a full hour to do and 10gp in components. So it sounds like you are either using homebrew rules or misreading the rules. Either way you need to discuss with the dm.
The Imp (familiar variant) can shapechange into other forms (raven, spider, and a rat) without issue, no need to dismiss and resummon.
Sorry, but to me it just seems like your DM is either overwhelmed with DMming - or a jerk. I would suggest talking to him in private, telling him that you feel saddened/harassed by his illogical, spiteful and pretty random "countermeasures" (at least thats the vibe i get from it) to using your familiar for what it is intended to. D&D should be a cooperative game, not DM vs Player.
I would expect all of those things from a player. You're doing it right. It sounds to me like your DM has trouble handling player actions that go against what he expects from the encounter. It's ok in some cases where maybe you're in a boss fight and he doesn't want you to just run. Then maybe a magical force keeps you from using misty step to get out, but doing a good chunk of damage on top of that is a little punishing. Scouting from players can be a problem for DMs who like to keep things secret until they just jump out. The DM just needs to learn how to deal with this without just shutting players down. There could also be some legit reasons for the DM actions. You can also talk with them after the session to find out why something happened. The ray of light could have been a trap that would have hit anyone who entered. The raven might have been suspicous because birds like that don't reside in the area. I don't know why a dragon would just up and fry a spider, but maybe there was a magical alarm of some sort. Even if there were legit reasons, the DM shouldn't be making encouters with the idea of always countering player abilities. It's fun for players to use their skills and creativity to overcome problems. So anyway, as usual, talk with your DM.
as a (only slightly) dissenting opinion, i say your familiar saved lives that day. rather than some player character eating a surprise round of lightning or ray beams it's the familiar. nice! ...except, beginning every combat with a surprise that just happens to obliterate the scout is more lazy the third time than it was shocking the first.
as for bouncing off walls and ceiling for big chunks of your health bar, that's the opposite of lazy: it's unnecessary and excessive. you're right to feel picked on, but i doubt it's meant to be malicious. that is the dm trying to 'even things out' so things still retain their danger and mystique. the next thing i'd expect is a character going down and then here come the fudged monster attacks. 'balance' in the other direction. it's a clumsy dungeon master who can't keep their thumb off the scales.
talk constructively with the dm. maybe suggest an official adventure starting from level 1, if you think they'd be open to it. the trap for new dungeon masters is all the cool stuff and how easy it is to throw it all in one big arena all at once. they're going to need time and practice to get better (whether it's with you or not). good luck to you and to your dm! i hope it was interesting, regardless!
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
Sounds like your DM is against clever actions by the players and is just throwing out excuses to punish you for doing so; and,
Your DM has no idea how spells work and is just punishing you for it. 22 damage for "pumping" into a wall? That's not how Misty Step works to begin with, and that is a significant amount of damage that would imply you either smashed into a spiked wall or hit that wall at a falling speed.
Honestly, I'd bow out from that table as it just sounds more like a DM that wants to use the game to punish players than to actually create a fun game that gives players space to play their classes
Thank you, yeah I'll talk to him.
Thank you everyone for the comments, I'll try to talk to the DM. Sorry on the delay I was out in Iceland for 2 weeks hiking :)
I agree with other posters, it sounds like your DM doesn't understand that these are things the game allows and encourages players to do, and thinks they have to balance against them (either because they mistakenly believe these abilities are "too strong" or because they've planned events in a very specific way that doesn't account for player unpredictability). Either way, it doesn't sound like you're playing with the most experienced DM if you're level 9 and they're still not used to players creatively problem solving. Either that or they're just adversarial and using you to enact some power fantasy.
If it's the first option, have a chat with them out of game and bring up some of these points and get their perspective to come to an understanding. If it's the second option, run. Do not play dnd with them, you will not have fun, because your fun isn't something an adversarial DM cares about.
Although I agree with most of the advice here, scouting familiars getting murdered makes complete sense to me in many situations.
These characters live in a world where Find Familiar exists. They know how it works and what people use it for. Thus any rat, bird, or spider wandering into a paranoid dragons lair is absolutely getting roasted. Undefined invisible thing creeping into my cave? Yeah, it's getting blasted if it's not Hiding.
Now I'm not going to have the castle guards shoot down every crow that flies over, but when you send something into a confined space in enemy territory you should moderate your expectations as to how it's going to turn out. You're probably not the first one who's tried it.
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(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
There are dragons with a burrowing speed, such as blue dragons, brass dragons, and crystal dragons. They also have blindsight, which based on the RAW description would let them "see" something moving above them within range. Now, blasting a spider does seem a bit excessive given that, but it's entirely within a blue dragon's kit.
Not spider invasion specifically, but plenty of dragons love the ambush angle. Lie in wait near their hoard, erupt behind would be thieves to trap them before killing them. And blindsight actually is automatic detection of anything that's not hiding within the radius, that's literally how all sight works in D&D. This specific example does seem a bit excessively punitive, but all of the basic factors check out. Dragon lies in wait below, something moves above it, dragon's senses detect it, dragon attacks. It literally describes in the blue dragon description how they hunt in this manner. Honestly, if the dragon knew or suspected it was being hunted, the whole scenario is pretty reasonable even.
This sounds to me like a problem with your DM rather than a problem with your character. I've used familiars in the past and not encountered such problems.
Thank you for your time and please have a very pleasant day.
As a DM that who has just recently started to be on the receiving end of creative familiar usage, this DM's response does very much seem like what is being described here. I myself do not do this, but I can certainly understand how a clever imp user can pull the rug out from under the DM quite easily, having had that done to me several times.
If the DM admits to the above when talking to them, I hope you can reach a compromise with them because it seems that the DM is overwhelmed by the notion that you can use your imp to avoid harm to yourself or your party. They may feel you are circumventing their encounters and responding in a malicious way. It could be without them even realizing it if we want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Personally, I try to reward my players when they do stuff like this. Playing smart is so much more fun than barrelling into every situation and smashing their way out.
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To somewhat defend the DM -- any effect that detects or keys off of creature type (such as detect evil and good) will reveal a familiar, and 9th level is more than high enough level that it's reasonable for bad guys to have made enough preparation that it will be necessary to be clever to spy on them, at least in more secure areas (for example, an evil temple that's protected by hallow or forbiddance), but it does sound like he was being pretty ham handed, and countermeasures shouldn't mean your ability is useless, just limited.