Creativity and house rules, what is stupid, and what is awesome?


Advice


In my other recent post I stated that our group plays in rotating DM's and with the DM change comes an entire different world, and an entire new set of house rules.

The previous session that we just finished was an interesting one. Never before have I seen a play get so upset with a DM that he walks out of the room.

House rules for Campaign 003:

-No Alignments.
-No wands/staves/Potions of healing. (No healing in an item whatsoever.)

So this was the first issue. With the no alignments, we have a paladin. Before the game was started he asked how smite would work. From what I understood it was that it worked on those with evil intentions. That created an argument, so then it went to smite only works on those that are affected for a bonus under the smite evil entry. That was to narrow so smite went to working on everything? Whatever, not that big of a deal the paladin can only do it once a day at our levels.

No healing in an item. ( In a very heavy Hack and Slash game)
This is very upsetting. This essentially forces a player to walk around as a heal stick for some one in the group. One player is essentially sacrificing their time to role play and heal people in combat. If people want to play an MMO they have computer games for that.

The alignment thing has been worked out yet 4/7 of us hate the idea of no alignment.

The no healing items is very very bothersome to myself and the players. All of us together approached the DM and pointed it out that one player was forced to be a healer. ( I understand there could be multiple people to spread out the healing job.) The DM responded with "Yup that's how I want it to be." We then began to state that it was a waste of a players time to show up to be the healer in a low role playing campaign. The DM ceased to care about it and said this is how it is.

How does one deal with a stubborn DM or what is good evidence that this is an awful house rule?

RPG Superstar 2011 Top 8

I've never played a no alignment game, but some people are in to it. Maybe give it a chance, assuming you can come up with a reasonable system for the protection from/detect/magical circle/etc. alignment spells. If they DM HASN'T thought about any of those but wants to play no alignment, then you may have a problem.

A no healing items game could be fun. It just means you need to play a lot smarter to avoid damage rather than Wand o CLW your way out of problems. I can see how it would tend to push your group towards making someone play a positive channeling cleric, but thats not necessarily the same as playing a healbot since those channels can be used out of combat to give a pick me up to the whole party easily, while the cleric can still beatstick/cast offensive spells during combats. You should also probably consider such survival techniques as running away or bribing your opponents in order to avoid taking damage.

In general, you seem to be having problems within your group with rotating DMs. Maybe you should find someone in the group who is good at it and wants to do it so everybody has a consistently better time. If everyone wants a turn DMing... well thats different from every group I've played with :P


Ditching alignment is a good thing, since that's a borked system anyways.

But ditching CLW wands?

Solution: Kill your characters. Repeatedly. Either he'll stop being stupid, or someone who actually understands how to DM can take his place. Win/win.


Evil Space Mantis wrote:

I've never played a no alignment game, but some people are in to it. Maybe give it a chance, assuming you can come up with a reasonable system for the protection from/detect/magical circle/etc. alignment spells. If they DM HASN'T thought about any of those but wants to play no alignment, then you may have a problem.

A no healing items game could be fun. It just means you need to play a lot smarter to avoid damage rather than Wand o CLW your way out of problems. I can see how it would tend to push your group towards making someone play a positive channeling cleric, but thats not necessarily the same as playing a healbot since those channels can be used out of combat to give a pick me up to the whole party easily, while the cleric can still beatstick/cast offensive spells during combats. You should also probably consider such survival techniques as running away or bribing your opponents in order to avoid taking damage.

In general, you seem to be having problems within your group with rotating DMs. Maybe you should find someone in the group who is good at it and wants to do it so everybody has a consistently better time. If everyone wants a turn DMing... well thats different from every group I've played with :P

Don't get me wrong, creativity to live? Sounds awesome! When the DM sets you up to fail with forcing others to heal through a hack and slash low RP/ low puzzle game. That is infuriating.

The rotating DM's is there for those who want to DM can, and those who just want to play can play. When I get my foot in for a DM spot I will be the 5/8th Dm.


Don't neglect the Heal skill! It can still help you in this case.


In my no-alignment house rule, I make the alignments planar forces, and such only planar infused entities have alignments as far as magic goes. Smite/Holy only effects the enemies smite gets its double damage against, so the Paladin is there to fight emissaries of Evil, not just any scumbag on the streets.

Also, I've played a few games now with a no divine casters policy, either just in the group, or in the entire world. What I like about it is the walking wounded party, having to decide to hole up and lick their wounds for a few days or bandage it up and keep marching. Death is final, and a tough encounter leaves its mark on the party for some time. In general I'd prefer the opposite of the OP's DM, access to heals in a can but not druids/clerics/etc.


Cult of Vorg wrote:

In my no-alignment house rule, I make the alignments planar forces, and such only planar infused entities have alignments as far as magic goes. Smite/Holy only effects the enemies smite gets its double damage against, so the Paladin is there to fight emissaries of Evil, not just any scumbag on the streets.

Also, I've played a few games now with a no divine casters policy, either just in the group, or in the entire world. What I like about it is the walking wounded party, having to decide to hole up and lick their wounds for a few days or bandage it up and keep marching. Death is final, and a tough encounter leaves its mark on the party for some time. In general I'd prefer the opposite of the OP's DM, access to heals in a can but not druids/clerics/etc.

We have done the no divine casters rule before and it wasn't to bad. It was kind of dull but it wasn't too bad.


As far as alignments go, well most RPG's don't even have them. Mostly the older ones where everyone was kind of copying D&D. So if you have played games outside of D&D there is a 90% chance you have played games without alignment. Most of the time when I run a D&D based game I use alignment as a loose guideline simply because so many powers/spells are alignment specific. If you do run a no alignment game the characters background story, motivations, etc. become much more important, without attention paid to these items you will quickly be playing in a chaotic crazy campaign.

As to the no magical item healing. Well no one forces the Cleric to run around healing people. If you don't want to be the combat medic don't play a cleric. Usually a GM does this to make magic healing more meaningful, and to make things grittier. Of course the opposite side of things is that it encourages the casters to nova, and increases the frequency of rest if done incorrectly, which seems to be the case in this instance.

Both items an be a good thing for a well thought out campaign, and setting, however from your description it just seems like your DM is being a douche.

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Have no one play a healer and state why. The DM will either give you something to take the place of a healer or it will be a short campaign.

I am all for GM's wanting to run a game how they want. If they have a vision I say run with it. But on the flip side the players should only play in what they want to play in. So either both groups compromise to a point where everyone is content or don't play. The GM can say. "well this is what I want to run, if you guys don't want to play in it. Then one of you can run something and I will play it." Or the players say "Sorry but what you want to run doesn't interest us. Since you don't want to run something else then we think Frank should run something."

Beyond that there is not a lot you can do. If that's what the GM wants to run. Your choices are play it in the way he is willing to run it or find someone else to run or find a new group. That's really your only three options at this point.

Though I am not sure what the thread title has to do with the issue of the thread. I was expecting a totally different thread by the title. :)

Dark Archive

Dark_Mistress wrote:
Have no one play a healer and state why. The DM will either give you something to take the place of a healer or it will be a short campaign.

Do this. Ignore the 'problem.' Play a group of Barbarians or whatever, optimize your ability to butcher stuff fast, and when someone dies, just replace them with a new character. Use the same sheet, but say that the character is Max's twin brother, also named Max, because his parents were not feeling very creative.

Play it like a game of Paranoia, where your character dies an average of three times in a good session. Laugh and whip out the next character sheet (or recycle the same one). No reason to worry about it.

From a meta-gaming standpoint, it's way more effective to be able to produce new characters on demand anyway, as your WBL will be spent effectively on gear appropriate to your level (no having to sell the old stuff at half value), your 'starter feats' that you needed to survive the early levels can be thrown out for stuff that leads into later-blooming stuff, etc, etc.

Heck, you can even 'game' this by making your inevitable replacement characters better optimized for the current situation, like Ranger (Favored Enemy: Whatever killed my last character), and you don't have to be worried about a bad choice, because, in a healer-less game, you'll probably be replacing that character soon enough...

Find the positives of this sort of game. Play it like a video game, where you pick another toon everytime your previous choice dies.


IMO any DM who refuses to consider changing aspects of the way he presents / runs his game even when his entire group or at least a majority are opposed to it, shouldn't be DMing.

You have rotating DMs, so it isn't like there is a shortage of people to replace him. The Players need to come to the DM as a group with their concerns and if he refuses to change things even though the majority of the group or the whole group are unhappy with the way he is running the game, then don't allow him to rotate as a DM.

House rules are great sometimes. Home-brew games are wonderful. But insisting on enforcing house-rules that none of your players are happy with is ridiculous. All it would take is one night at the game table, everyone unanimously saying "hey we have a problem with the way you house-rule this" and if he says "oh well that's how it is" you follow by saying, again unanimously, "ok well we won’t be playing your game, is anyone else prepared to run a game tonight" and make sure one of you IS prepared to do that. At that point he can either concede the point, and run a game that his players enjoy, or he can lose his DM position.

This can cause for some temporarily hurt feelings. But you can either put a person in their place, as ONE of a group, or you can allow him to be a dictator and encroach on the enjoyment of the rest of the group.

I have never been ousted as a DM. I talk to my players and make sure they are enjoying my game and the story I present. But I have had to oust players in one way or another for the good of my group before. And I have allowed my group to oust people for the good of the group. If a player is a constant problem I have killed off their characters, or given them other serious in game consequences for their in game stupidity. And I usually run a PVP game, so if the party decides they don’t like you, they can kick your character out of the group. In extreme instances I have had a player who had several characters get executed by other party members for antagonizing them. If they still don't straighten up then they stop getting invites to the game. It is a bit different with the DM being the problem. But in that instance you have to gather the players and come to him united with your concerns. If he refuses to listen you tell him he can either modify his game so that the players actually enjoy playing or he will not be running anything.

This is just my own view. If it helps great, the important thing is that it is a game that you are sharing with many other people and the objective is a fun cohesive experience. I have no intention of getting into a flame war about "who is more important, the players or the DM" because I don't think either is accurate. I have seen horrible players that needed to go, and I have seen horrible DMs that needed to go (Well, heard of them more than seen them). They are a group and if they cannot work as a group then the dynamic needs to change.

Liberty's Edge

In my first group, we played a campaign that had no clerics and very little healing magic except for healing skills, minor mundane herbal cures, and the very rare minor healing items. The gods had abandoned the realm and divine casters were a thing of the long past (this was before Dragonlance was written by the way). Searching for and bringing back the gods was one of the threads of the story, but even at the very end, we saw very little in the way of divine magic except at the very end from our Cavalier turn Paladin. Bringing the gods back was the beginning of a new era, but also the end of our campaign.

We had a fantastic DM who really knew how to craft a story. We didn't complain about the lack of healing, but it was a challenge at times; we learned to adjust and play smarter because dead was forever. That kind of campaign is not for everyone. Fortunately, everyone in our group hung on for the ride. We lost our fair share of characters, but the ones that stayed through it until the very end were truly the heroes of the story. I've not found a similar campaign like it, but given the chance, I would jump at it in a heartbeat.

As for the alignment thing, I agree and disagree with the GMs decision. If the game is to be played as a ROLE PLAYING game, the GM and the players need some kind of guideline to go by so they can judge if the Player is actually playing the role. The concept of alignment is pretty limiting, but something is better than nothing. If alignment is thrown out, a better way is for a player to decide on the traits, mannerisms, likes, fears, motivations, etc of the character.


I just skimmed through the posts, so I do not know if this was mentioned or not, but in a previous thread it was pointed out that not having alignments does not stop people from being good or evil. We do not have alignments in the real world, so does that mean that Hitler was not Evil? Smiting still works without alignments.


No healing? No problem!

Let the Priest be all out with damage, it kills off the opposition that much faster and thus generates less damage. if your group is still heavily wounded after nearly every single encounter then do a simple thing:

rest.

Pisses off the GM and shows him. If you are all low on HP with zero spells/channels left, it's sensible anyways as the alternative is diing.

If the GM insists of carrying on (through in game or out of game methods) then carry on, die, and blame your death on him - works every time.

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